Camping trip

Those of you who know me fairly well, know that I enjoy camping and usually end up taking at least one camping trip every summer.  Last year, we went to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.  This year, we plan to revisit San Simeon State Beach and Hearst Castle and then later on in the week, we'll travel up to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  We've been to both, but the kids were fairly young when they visited Hearst Castle, so it'll be neat to visit it again.  My youngest and I were at Lassen three years ago, but the older two have never been there so it's new to them.

For those of you who have never been to Hearst Castle, I have two words for you.  It's amazing.  William Randolph Hearst made his fortune in newspaper, yellow journalism and then used his fortune to amass massive amounts of statuary and pieces of art.  He then housed them all in his "La Cuesta Encantada."  Two pools, one outdoor larger than an Olympic swimming venue and the other indoors, under a tennis court and inlaid with 20 ct. gold are just part of the things that you'll see at the castle.  There are rooms at this place that are larger than your entire house.

We plan on camping just south of the castle at San Simeon State Beach, then taking the main tour the next day.  After then, we'll pull up camp the next day and head to Lassen where we'll camp for the rest of the week.  Lassen is the last volcano in the contiguous United States to have erupted before Mt. St. Helens.  Lassen was very active between 1914 and 1919.  

Our original plan was to spend one of our days hiking to the top of Lassen Peak.  There is an earthcache (geology related) located at the top of the peak.  Three years ago when we were there, we were blocked by tons and tons of snow.  I've noticed several people have logged the cache last month so the trail was open.  Yep.  The key word in that was sentence is the word was.

We'll be getting to the park on Tuesday.  The park is closing the trail down for about 6 weeks for needed trail work beginning Monday.  We missed it by a matter of days.  Fortunately, there's plenty of other things to do there, so I doubt we'll have a lot of free time on our hands, but it was a little disappointing to have worked toward getting to the top only to miss out by a matter of days.  We'll have to satisfy ourselves with other hikes in the park.  Either way, it should be a lot of fun.

We will eat s'mores, take photos of ourselves in front of the entrance signs to the park and document our campsites like we have done every year with just a couple of exceptions.  The campsite shot here is our campsite in Mill Creek Campground in Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park.  It was a very secluded spot, one of the best campsites I've camped in over the course of my many years.  There was actually a small staircase leading up to the site itself.  If we get campsites as nice as this in this upcoming week, we'll be doing well.

I shall be offline for the better part of the week, but I'll be posting photos of our trip in the upcoming weeks.